Launched in 2008, Calgary’s 10 Year Plan to End Homelessness focused on providing housing to stop the year over year growth the city had been experiencing in homelessness since 1992 when the first Homeless Point-in-Time Count was held.

Since 2008, almost 10,000 people have been housed with approximately 80% of those retaining their housing or experiencing a successful exit from homelessness.

The majority were adults, not children.

The Plan focused on adult single homelessness. Initially on the high acuity, high chronicity individuals who needed wrap-around intensive supports in housing. As the architects of the Plan began to realize that there were a large number of low-acuity but chronically homelessness individuals trapped in shelter, they shifted to housing for that demographic.

There was no plan for children and families.

Still isn’t.

And that’s who the Plan has failed. The children.

On Friday, I had to meet with the shelter management team of the family emergency shelter where I work to talk about what actions we could take over the long weekend to create safety for everyone. Staff and families.

With over 40 families in a shelter designed to accommodate 27, and no staff available over the long weekend to be able to open our satellite emergency shelter, we had to do something.

We went through the list of families. Talked about ideas, who we could call, what programs we might be able to access to find relief, at least for the weekend.

I called the domestic violence shelters. They were full.

We called everyone we could think of, asking for help. For ideas on how we could weather this long weekend and provide the families we’re sheltering, and our staff, safety. There was no help.

Desperate for solutions, we had to tell the single pregnant moms unaccompanied by children, and the couples who were pregnant but without children, that they had to leave. They could go to the single adult shelters who have room, their numbers are down. Not ideal, particularly when you’re pregnant, but we had to create safety for the children.

We had to tell the single pregnant mom without accompanying children who called that we had no room. She would have to find an alternative.

It was extremely hard on staff. As one staff told me, I can’t recall a time when we’ve ever sent families away.

But they understood. We had to keep the children safe. Over-crowding, particularly with families already in crisis, is not good for anyone.

The recent Point-in-Time Count of Homelessness showed a continued steady decline in adult single homelessness.

Family homelessness, they found, wasn’t growing.

It isn’t falling either, and, while on April 11th, when the Count was conducted there were only 27 families in the shelter, it has steadily been climbing since May to reach a recent high of 44 families, or a total of 155 individuals, in shelter.  We are doing more with less, and it is the children who will suffer.

Where is the Plan to end child and family homelessness?

Where is the focus on the children who will one day grow up to be adults? Without interventions now, without addressing the trauma and toxic stress they are facing in their everyday young lives, the research is clear. They are more likely to grow up to become homeless.

It was a tough day Friday. I am acting ED and Director Programs. As I told the staff when we met, I trust your decisions. First and foremost, we must create safety for the children.

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Please Note:  These are my personal reflections, opinions and questions. They are not a statement of the agency for whom I work.

Perhaps some of my frustration, and fear, comes from the call I received late Friday night. A single mother with a 3-year old child seeking shelter. She phoned the media line posted on our website and got me. I have nowhere to go, she said. Can I come there?

I gave her the phone number of the main shelter. I didn’t have the heart to tell her we were full. I’m sure the staff won’t either because no matter what, they will always find room for the children.

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Photo Source:

The world is misty this morning when I awaken.

An hour later, the mist rises and the world around me becomes visible.

Yet for that moment in time, it appeared to be gone. Vanished.

Like life. We travel along and suddenly encounter an unknown, a situation that doesn’t make sense, a darkness we’ve never known before.

We struggle to make sense of it. To grasp it’s meaning. To get through it.

We feel like there is no up or down. That everything is turned inside out.

That what we knew no longer is true. That who we are no longer fits.

And then, one morning we awaken and the world is right side up again.

We see the sun. Smell the flowers. Hear the sounds. And we are at peace again. Relaxed. Content with our place in this world.

Experiencing homelessness is like being in the mist. There is no sense of relief in site. No up or down. Just the great abyss of loss and despair that envelops you in its massive all-encompassing fog of hopelessness.

The fog of homelessness does not rise as quickly and effortlessly as the mist this morning.

It has staying power. Tenacity.

For children, that fog can change their entire lives. It can close off pathways to resiliency and well-being, leaving them stranded on islands of cognitive disabilities, poor impulse control, susceptible to drugs, abuse and more. It can circumvent clear-sightedness with its constant blocking of the view outside. The view beyond a family emergency shelter’s doors. The view beyond this place called homeless.

At the family emergency shelter where I work, children walk through our doors everyday. Confused. Angry. Lost, they follow their parents to this place they don’t understand, unsure of how to respond to the loss of the world as they knew it in this new world they do not know.

It is challenging. Hard. Confusing.

Supporting children through a familial experience of homelessness is vital. They need to be taught tools that build their resiliency. Tools that help them positively cope with their feelings. Tools that help them interact in a communal setting in ways that create less stress, less turmoil.

Last week, as I stood in the dining room helping staff manage dinner, a young boy came up to me and without a word gave me a big hug.

I was surprised, a little uncomfortable but in the moment thought, “How sweet.”

Later, in talking to one of our fmily support workers she was telling me of the challenges this young boy faces with understanding appropriate and inappropriate touching.

He doesn’t understand personal boundaries, she told me. Part of what we are attempting to do is to teach him what it means to have personal space and how to respect our own, and others. We need to help him understand boundaries so that he doesn’t randomly go up and hug strangers and find himself in unsafe situations.

It was like a fog lifted.

I understood.

When that young boy had hugged me, my surprise was based on my discomfort that a child I do not know would just walk up and hug me. I wasn’t sure how to respond. I wasn’t sure what the hug was all about but because I have a worldview that sees children through the lens of, “They do the sweetest things and hugs are sooo cute,” I saw his hug as ‘sweet’.

Framed in the context that he does not know or understand the use of personal boundaries or the need to ask permission to hug first, I can see that my lens was fogged up with my misunderstanding. Because of my frame, I saw him as expressing how grateful he was for the dinner he just had, or for having a place like the shelter to come to, or just that he was friendly.

In actuality, his hug was an expression of his lack of understanding of boundaries, and a deep need for attention and affection, which he will strive to get wherever he can, even from strangers.

And therein lies the challenge. To support this young boy in his early childhood development, teaching him healthy boundaries, and how to be safe in this world, is more affirming than accepting inappropriate hugs.

In the fog of my lack of understanding of the situation, I didn’t know how to respond in ways that would best support him in his development.

Out of the fog I understand the importance of stepping back from my worldview to see into the heart of what so many of the children we see at the shelter experience — a world of chaos, crisis, stress and turmoil.

A world they do not understand and will do anything possible to make sense of if only so that the fog will lift and they will feel less frightened, alone, scared.

And while it may feel like the best thing we can do is to give them all a hug, it’s not.

The best thing we can do is to build a safe container around them in which they can learn to build resiliency, healthy boundaries and powerful ways to be in this world. That way, no matter where they live, when the fog of homelessness lifts, they have the tools they need to live rich and fulfilling lives. A world in which they connect on deep and appropriate levels with the people around them. A world in which hugs are not an expression of your attachment issues but rather, an expression of your capacity to connect in healthy ways to the world around you.